Pin Trading Promotes Interaction

In addition to earning Pathfinder honors, a big part of Oshkosh culture is trading for particular pins that have a history and ones from other countries. Ron and Rhonda Carr have been trading pins since ’94 and have established quite a collection.

They are at camporee this year with the Des Moines Navigators from the Iowa-Missouri Conference. “We get to meet a lot of nice people so that’s fun,” says Ron.

“We just stopped by to say hi to a few Pathfinders then suddenly we had a whole crowd surrounding our cart wanting to trade pins with us,” adds Rhonda. “You can sense that this camporee is much larger than ones before.”

FFIC 2014 has 47,000 people and expects 52,000 on Sabbath.

“We don’t sell any of our pins—we only trade,” explains Rhonda. “We mostly do it to meet new people and interact. It’s fun to share our collection and find new pins to add to it.”